Immanuel Kant

Königsberg

Neighbours reportedly set their watches by his daily walk.

💡 Did you know? Kant scarcely ever left his home town of Königsberg and yet became the most influential modern philosopher worldwide.

Critique of Pure Reason

Over a decade in the making: arguably the most consequential work of modern philosophy.

💡 Did you know? The „Critique of Pure Reason“ investigates what we can know at all and what lies forever beyond our knowledge.

Copernican revolution

Our knowledge does not conform to objects: objects conform to our ways of knowing.

💡 Did you know? As Copernicus moved the Earth from the centre, Kant reverses knowing: we do not conform to things, but things to our forms of intuition.

categorical imperative

'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.'

💡 Did you know? „Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law“: Kant's supreme moral law.

as a mere means

The 'humanity formula' of the categorical imperative: foundation of the modern idea of human dignity.

💡 Did you know? A person must never be treated merely as a means but always also as an end: a foundation of human dignity.

Have courage to use your own understanding

From the essay 'What Is Enlightenment?' (1784): enlightenment as 'man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity'.

💡 Did you know? „Sapere aude (dare to use your own understanding“) Kant's motto of the Enlightenment.

David Hume

Hume's doubts about causality forced Kant to refound the theory of knowledge.

💡 Did you know? It was David Hume who woke Kant „from his dogmatic slumber“ and drove him to his critical philosophy.

thing in itself

We know the world only as it appears to us: shaped by space, time and the categories of the understanding.

💡 Did you know? The world as it is „in itself“, independent of us, remains fundamentally unknowable for Kant: we see only „appearances“.

Perpetual Peace

Published in 1795: a premonition of the League of Nations and the United Nations.

💡 Did you know? Kant's essay „Perpetual Peace“ sketched a federation of free states: an idea that later inspired the UN and the EU.

at 46

Before that, the popular lecturer taught everything from logic to geography for decades: declining calls to other cities.

💡 Did you know? Only at 46 did Kant obtain his professorship and he wrote his major works only after the age of 50.

the starry heavens and the moral law

The close of the 'Critique of Practical Reason': also the inscription on his tomb by Königsberg Cathedral.

💡 Did you know? „The starry heaven above me and the moral law within me“; this line is on Kant's gravestone in Königsberg.

It is good

Spoken after a sip of wine and water: the 79-year-old died peacefully in Königsberg.

💡 Did you know? His skull was later measured: observers marvelled at the high forehead.

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was the central thinker of the Enlightenment: his „Critique of Pure Reason“ and the „categorical imperative“ still shape epistemology and ethics.

💡 Did you know? His daily walks were so punctual that neighbours are said to have set their clocks by them.